I recently made the mistake of sharing a news story about Pope Francis that was actually totally fake (damn you, internetz!) But given that this recent video and story comes direct from the "Official Vatican Network" website, I think I can trust its legitimacy.

Basically, Pope Francis gave an exhortation to the world's [mostly desperately poor] dumpster divers, asserting that "wasted food could feed all of [the] world's hungry."

The Pope is a freegan sympathizer!

According to the Vatican Network website, the Pope urged the "cartoneros" and "recicladores" to raise awareness of food waste.

"We are living in a throwaway culture, where we easily toss away not only things, but people,” Pope Francis said. He added that the food which is discarded could “feed all the hungry people of the world.”

I may not understand Dutch, but climate change is a universal problem that anyone can understand (except some Republicans...) I recently watched this 45 minute video on the subject, largely narrated in Dutch by astronaut André Kuipers, and got a pretty good idea about how climate change is affecting our planet.

Of course there are plenty of documentary videos about climate change in English, but... well, I'm not in any of them. That's right, catch me digging through trash around the 34:20 mark, repping the Uptown Freegans!

The producers of the show wanted to talk to a freegan, to show how much food we are rescuing from the waste stream. Given that I don't understand Dutch, it's a bit unclear to me how they make the connection between food waste (or waste in general) and climate change... but still, it's cool that my mug was on national television in Belgium!

And yes, we should stop wasting so much food because the planet Earth (and all of us who live on it) are seriously affected by the injustices inherent in a food system that allows so much to go to waste.

On Wednesday night, Uptown Freegans went on another food rescue mission, this time in Inwood. Actually, there were about as many journalism and anthropology students as there were freegans. These were more interested in observing, taking photos and asking questions than taking food home. Still, for the five or six of us there who actually are freegans, we found more than enough to stock up for a few days! Here are some photos of the bounty:

I probably won't make a post like this after every food rescue, just wanted to convey how much is being tossed, even here in the Heights. If you are interested in what we Uptown Freegans have in the works, please like us on facebook, join on meetup, follow on twitter, engage the conversation in googlegroups or just send us a plain-old-fashioned email.

There are several other freegan-related topics that I'll be writing about for this blog in the near future. So keep a look out for that as well!

Last night was the first monthly meeting and bi-weekly food rescue mission of the Uptown Freegans. And everything went great!

There were five of us there for the meeting, which was quite short and didn't have much of an agenda. I simply wanted to meet my freegan comrades, explain my motivations for organizing the group, and to get their permission to be added to a google group for us all to keep in touch.

Three more freegans joined us at the first stop on our food rescue mission. We found a great amount and assortment of food there, laying it out on display for passers-by to see. Once everything was collected, I gave a short version of what we call the "wave the banana speech". The whole thing wasn't very well organized, but we'll get it together for the next food rescues (I hope!).

We then hit up other grocery stores, a pharmacy, bagel shop, and even lucked out with a box of vinyl records on the sidewalk. We read through the albums and artists one by one, each freegan claiming the records according to their tastes (and whether they own turntables or not - my roommate took home a handful and turned them into bowls today!)

Everyone who came out last night was great. They were very friendly and most had plenty of prior experience. All went home with their hands full. After taking stock at home, I posted the following to my twitter account:

Also rescued bagels, pastries, pound cake, donuts, salsa, bottled water. Clothes hangers, ribbon, cookbook & vinyl records!All in all, yesterday's meeting and rescue were super! So riding on those vibes, today I created an e-mail address, google group, and twitter account to the already-whelming facebook and meetup (please join/follow/like any and all of these, we'd love to have you join in on the conversation or at future meetings and rescue missions!) Hopefully some of my new freegan friends will also be willing and able to help me keep some of this going. I had enough to deal with before I started this group, haha.